May 7 (Bloomberg) -- Saudi Arabia arrested dozens of
Islamic militants as the instability in Syria and Yemen raises
concerns that the conflicts there may blow back on the world’s
largest oil producer.

More than 60 people, almost all Saudi nationals, were
arrested, Major General Mansour Al Turki, a senior Interior
Ministry official, told reporters in Riyadh yesterday. He said
the group was planning to assassinate security officials, attack
religious clerics, and had built a bomb-making facility.

Saudi Arabia has cracked down on al-Qaeda since 2004, when
militants returning from Afghanistan and Iraq tried to
destabilize the Arab world’s biggest economy and U.S. ally by
attacking foreign nationals and an oil installation. Saudi
Arabia escaped the turmoil of the Arab Spring, which led to the
ouster of a number of neighboring government in 2011. It remains
vulnerable to attack by militants, say analysts.

“We have been concerned that radical groups on both sides
of the kingdom would plan to attack targets in Saudi Arabia,”
Theodore Karasik, director of research at the Institute for Near
East and Gulf Military Analysis in Dubai, said by phone.

The cell uncovered by Saudi authorities is linked to al-Qaeda groups in Yemen and militants fighting in Syria, and had
smuggled weapons across the Yemeni border, Al Turki said. Saudi
security discovered the group by monitoring their activity on
social networking websites, the ministry said in a statement on
the Saudi Press Agency.

`New Theater'

The conflict in Syria has pulled fighters from all over the
Arab world to battle against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
Al-Qaeda’s affiliates, including the Islamic State of Iraq and
the Levant and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, are
increasingly taking the initiative as al-Qaeda’s core leadership
has been weakened, the U.S. State Department said on April 30.

“Syria is a new theater now that is providing al-Qaeda
with supporters,” Khalid al-Dakhil, a political sociologist in
Riyadh, said by phone. “It is a genuine concern and a source of
instability in the region, but it isn’t a direct threat to the
kingdom.”

Critics of the kingdom say it has been partly responsible
for the rise of militant groups in the region because it has
financed some of them, including groups involved in the Syrian
civil war.

Saudi Arabia, with a Sunni Muslim majority, has taken steps
to prevent its citizens from going to fight in the civil war in
Syria. The conflict pits mainly Sunni rebels against President
Assad, whose government has roots in a version of Shiite Islam.

Saudi Arabia said in February it will jail any of its
citizens caught fighting abroad for between three to 20 years.

`Failed State'

Yemen-based militants, who have hit Saudi Arabia in the
past and attacked Yemeni government institutions, are battling
armed forces in the south of the country. Earlier this month,
Yemen’s military killed 37 suspected al-Qaeda militants,
according to the country’s official SABA news agency.

“Yemen is a failed state,” said Paul Sullivan, a Middle
East specialist at Georgetown University in Washington. “It is
getting worse by the day. The Saudis should get increasingly
worried about what might come out of Yemen.”

The instability raises concerns that Saudi Arabia’s
southern neighbor could disintegrate like Somalia or be plunged
into civil war. Yemen is a haven for al-Qaeda in the Arabian
Peninsula, which includes Saudi militants who fled the
government crackdown starting in 2004. It’s been used as a base
to plan attacks against the U.S., including an attempt to
parcel-bomb American synagogues.

Car Bombs

Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, now the Saudi interior minister,
was wounded in August 2009 when a suicide bomber blew himself up
at the prince’s office in Jeddah, an attack that al-Qaeda said
was planned in Yemen.

Islamists returned to Saudi Arabia from wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan with skills they later turned against the Al Saud
family and its control of the world’s second-largest crude
reserves. Militants tried in 2006 to penetrate the southern gate
of Abqaiq, the world’s largest oil facility, with twin car
bombs.